You fell for a con. Seventy percent of you voted for the very policy that has taken your friend away because you thought the damn coal mines were coming back when everyone has been telling you for years that the coal industry is as dead as Kelsey's nuts and that Donald Trump, Jesus Christ, and J.H. Blair working together couldn't bring it back. Because, I suspect, you know that better than anybody, you channeled your frustration and despair into chants of "Build The Wall!" And, Ms. Johnson? Virtually all of "those people" actually do come here and help. If that head of lettuce on the counter could only talk…

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Tonight, the president will unveil his facsimile of a federal budget and I guarantee you it will make the lives of practically every person in all these stories worse, not better. And, in a few months, when it's really begun to bite, the editors and news directors will send out more expeditions to find out what "real Americans" feel about the disaster they've wrought on themselves, and us. They all had the same choices we did. They all had the same opportunity to inform themselves; I mean, it wasn't like the campaign was under-covered, and it wasn't like the eventual winner hasn't governed precisely the way he campaigned.

Feeling lost and desperate is a terrible thing. But if, out of loss and desperation, you drink 20 cold beers out of the old preparation room and smash your car into a daycare center, the judge is not going to care how lost and desperate you felt. You build your own prisons in this life. You design your own sentences.

Statement from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Following Listening Session with Historically Black College and University LeadersFEBRUARY 28, 2017
Contact: Press Office, (202) 401-1576, press@ed.gov
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos released the following statement after meeting with presidents and chancellors of Historically Black Colleges and Universities at the White House:

A key priority for this administration is to help develop opportunities for communities that are often the most underserved. Rather than focus solely on funding, we must be willing to make the tangible, structural reforms that will allow students to reach their full potential.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have done this since their founding. They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education. They saw that the system wasn't working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution.

HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.

Their counsel and guidance will be crucial in addressing the current inequities we face in education. I look forward to working with the White House to elevate the role of HBCUs in this administration and to solve the problems we face in education today.

Trump usually loves to celebrate all-American heroes. But he’s passed on commending Ian Grillot, a bystander who leapt to take the gunman down before anyone else was harmed. Grillot was shot, too.

Surely the White House team could have cobbled together a statement of some sort, a response to at least address growing fears that the U.S. is unwelcoming of immigrants, or worse, that the foreign-born need to fear for their lives here. The deadly incident in Olathe has resonated across the country and even around the globe.

During such moments of crisis, people look to the president for strength and guidance.

They need to hear their moral outrage articulated, the condemnation of a possible hate crime and the affirmation that the U.S. values everyone’s contributions, whether you’re an immigrant or native-born. For Trump, this was a crucial opportunity to condemn such hateful acts and to forcefully declare that this is not who we are.

‘He’s a Performance Artist Pretending to be a Great Manager’
Donald Trump sits at the top of the biggest org chart in the world. Why does he look so uncomfortable in the job?
By MICHAEL KRUSE February 28, 2017

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“I don’t think there’s anything of scale that he’s had his hands on that he hasn’t made a hash of,” biographer Tim O’Brien said in an interview last week.

“When we worked together,” Nobles said, “he had three casinos in Atlantic City and he had the shuttle, and all four companies had their own operating systems, and I went to him and said, ‘Why don’t we combine these things?’ And he said, ‘No. I want those guys competing against each other. I think it will make all of them stronger.’ Any normal businessman I know would have said, ‘Let’s take advantage of the economies of scale here.’ He didn’t think like that.”

And as the ‘80s flipped to the ‘90s, the consequences of Trump’s unorthodox decisions were clear. “All those businesses are gone, of course,” Nobles said, “because they weren’t as successful as they could have been—and should have been.”

So while smart, experienced political professionals have called the start to the Trump presidency unprecedented in the annals of the office, it is not unprecedented in the annals of Trump. Trump has managed in the Oval Office in Washington pretty much exactly the way he managed on Fifth Avenue in New York, say people who worked for him at different points over the last 45 years as well as writers of the best, most thoroughly reported Trump biographies. In recent interviews, they recounted a shrewd, slipshod, charming, vengeful, thin-skinned, belligerent, hard-charging manager who was an impulsive hirer and a reluctant firer and surrounded himself with a small cadre of ardent loyalists; who solicited their advice but almost always ultimately went with his gut and did what he wanted; who kept his door open and expected others to do the same not because of a desire for transparency but due to his own insecurities and distrusting disposition; who fostered a frenetic, internally competitive, around-the-clock, stressful, wearying work environment in which he was a demanding, disorienting mixture of hands-on and hands-off—a hesitant delegator and an intermittent micromanager who favored fast-twitch wins over long-term follow-through, promotion over process and intuition over deliberation.

“I think he’s the same Donald Trump as the Donald Trump I knew when I was working with him,” said former Trump Organization executive vice president Louise Sunshine, who worked for Trump for 15 years starting in 1972. “Same management style. He’s always created competition and chaos.”